Bright Lights, No City

The night sky is flooded with stars in the sparsely populated Southern Appalachians. And thanks to a North Carolina observatory, you can now get a closer look.

The Bare Dark Sky Observatory in Yancey County, North Carolina, opened in 2017, offering a view of the heavens through a 34-inch telescope. The observatory was recently certified by the International Dark Sky Association as a stargazing site protected from light pollution, and was mentioned by CNN as one of the 23 best places to look at the stars around the world.

The observatory is part of the Mayland Earth to Sky Park, affiliated with Mayland Community College. 

“With our telescope ... the magnification that you can see things is incredible—you can see the rings of Saturn through it, you can see the eye of Jupiter,” said Margaret Early-Thiele, Mayland’s foundation director. “It’s a whole different experience than you can get with any type of backyard telescope. You can look at deep space objects—nebulas—that you can’t see with the naked eye or binoculars.”

Mayland students use the observatory for their astronomy classes. And Early-Thiele said that with the CNN article and the IDA’s certification, the observatory is beginning to become more popular with out-of-town visitors.

“Two-thirds of our visitors over the last two years have driven an average of two to five hours to get to us,” she said. “We’ve had international people come, we’ve had people as far away as Washington State come, fly specifically to do studies and viewings through the telescope.”

What makes Yancey County an ideal place for stargazing is simply the darkness. Most inhabited parts of the world are filled with “light pollution,” artificial light that keeps the stars blurred and never really goes away. Ruskin Hartley, executive director of the IDA, said that light pollution has increased dramatically in recent years.

“In Europe and North America more than 80 percent of people can no longer see the Milky Way where they live,” Hartley said. “The vast majority of people don’t know they’re missing something.”

Local real estate broker Wanda Proffitt, on the other hand, was never aware that Yancey County’s dark skies were unique before becoming involved with the observatory. Proffitt previously worked with the Yancey County Economic Development Commission.

“It is amazing when you go there … it’s just millions of stars,” Proffitt said. “Living here all my life, you know, you just never think about it.”

Hartley said that preventing light pollution is more than just a matter of keeping development down—it’s about what kind of lights are used outdoors.

“Our Dark Sky Parks certification demonstrates that the people that are managing these properties are doing everything they can to ... manage light pollution on site so that people can experience the night sky there,” Hartley said. 

The observatory can still use a little bit of light to make sure people can get in and out of the facility safely, they just have to use the right kind of lights.

“They’re required to take steps to make sure that the lighting that they’re using on site is not damaging … that they’re using responsible lighting techniques, only lighting places that need it, shining the light down rather than shining it up into the sky,” Hartley said. 

In 2020, the observatory is adding a planetarium so that it can show recordings of previous telescope viewings during the day, or on cloudy nights. In the lush Smoky Mountains, bad weather is definitely a concern, and the observatory offers ticket refunds if it is too cloudy to see the stars. But even without the planetarium, the observatory adds a nighttime activity in an area where many attractions close at the end of the day.

“If you’re a night owl, or if you just enjoy being outside in nature, there’s nothing better to do than to just go look at the stars, and it’s something that’s very age-appropriate for everybody,” Early-Thiele said. “Small children can get a lot out of it, as well as a professional astronomer.”

Want to go?

The observatory opens up for community viewing nights twice a week—Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets for community nights are available online, with information available here: www.mayland.edu/foundation/foundation-events/observatory.

“Anyone can purchase a ticket online, and you spend two hours with our observatory specialists,” Early-Thiele said. “And then it can also be rented for private groups as well.”